Founder @ FDTC → I help startups go from $100K-$15M by improving sales processes, playbooks, & people → Building the #1 SaaS sales coaching program for AEs → Featured in Techstars & Sales Hacker → #helpmedontsellme

It was Monday morning, 11 AM when I went to my boss and said, “I’m sorry, this job, sales...it’s not for me” and I left.

That was 13+ years ago.

At 22 years old I landed my first real job fresh out of college ready to be a “career person.”

I crushed the interview.

But when I came into work for my first day at 10am, I quickly realized that I was scared sh**less of sales, and quit within the first hour.

For the next 3 years, I had PTSD and avoided sales like the plague.

I played it safe and stayed in my comfort zone.

No sales-related stuff whatsoever.

I lost my confidence and ambition. 

I missed career opportunities and wasted away my early 20s.

Fast forward to present day:

I'm a former 2X VP of Sales who took 1 startup from $0 ARR to ≈ $10M ARR in 4 years, and another from $1.5M to ≈ $4.6M ARR in 18 months.

I now teaching SMB AEs and teams how to be top sellers, make higher 6-figures, and get promoted through repeatable systems and playbooks.


Want to learn more? Book a clarity call: https://calendly.com/fdtc/30min 


P.S.⚠️ Grab my top (FREE) 24 discovery questions 6,000+ salespeople are using: https://bit.ly/4d3B2sl


Otherwise, you can find me here:
► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@demotoclose
► iTunes: https://apple.co/3Fome9g | Spotify: https://spoti.fi/408V0LS
► Twitter: https://twitter.com/@mistamor

Mor Assouline

I used to say I have no time to work out.

A 30–45 min workout isn’t just 30–45 min.

Between commuting + showering it’s at least 1–2 hours.

But what if it didn’t have to be?

3 of the best purchases I made over the last 6 months:
	1.	A pull up/dip bar for my office
	2.	A stand up desk
	3.	An in office treadmill

All are in office.

Requires 0 commute.

Integrated in my work.

I made it too easy for myself to say yes.

Founder @ Demo to Close | “Success feels like luck. I don’t have a repeatable process.” → I coach SMB & MM AEs on the system for predictable performance | 2X VP of Sales

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SMB sales is overwhelming.

Unlike ENT, it feels like you don’t have time to breathe.

I’ve been there.

- Running 5-6 sales calls every day.
- No time to prep for next meeting.
- Forgetting to follow your call structure.

It’s a lot.

So here’s how I'd reset my focus before the next call:

I’d have a pre call ritual.

Before every call, I’d take a walk around the office, and mentally rehearse what’s about to happen.

It worked for me.

What’s yours?

I audited 47 discovery calls. Inbound close rate = 45%. Outbound close rate =17%. Same MM AE, same approach, but completely different results.

They forgot the most important part of discovery:

You should not treat inbound and outbound leads the same way.

Inbound prospects:
- Raised their hand
- Have a problem they're trying to solve
- Expect to be challenged and questioned

You can be direct: "What's broken that made you reach out?"

Outbound prospects:
- Didn't ask to talk to you
- You're coming to them
- Need context before they'll engage
- You have to earn the right to ask questions

The principle: Your approach should match their entry point.

Inbound = Permission granted They gave you permission by raising their hand. Use it.

Outbound = Permission required You need to earn the right to dig deeper.

Example:
Wrong way with outbound: 
→ "What challenges are you facing with your current system?" (They're thinking: "Who is this person and why should I tell them anything?")

Right way with outbound: 
→ "When I speak with [personas], they tell me they're dealing with [problem A], [problem B] or [Problem C]. So when I did some research, I noticed [relevant trigger] and was wondering if any of that is also something you're experiencing too?"

The lesson: Stop using the same playbook for different situations.

Read the room and map your approach to where the buyer lives.


P.S. Here are 24 of the top discovery questions 7,000+ AEs have been using: https://lnkd.in/eR69raD4

A mid-market AE I just started coaching told me his problem is "inconsistent prospecting." I asked him to screen share and show me his process. 

I found the real problem within 5 minutes.

Me: What does inconsistent mean?

Him: prospects once or twice a month instead of weekly.

Me: Why?

Him: It takes 3-4 hours and it's exhausting.

Me: Okay. But why does it take 3-4 hours? What are you actually doing 
during those 3-4 hours?

Him: He logs into database directory, searches a specific vertical and adds 
some criteria, opens 50+ websites. Decides if each one is a fit.

Me: How does you decide which is worth going after?

Him: Gut feel. I just know when I see it.

Me: What IS gut feel?

Him: don't know. It's like... I can't explain it. I just know based on certain 
things I’m noticing.

Me: sounds like its a mix of certain criteria and intuition?

Him: Yes

Me: "So your brain has seen hundreds of companies. Some closed. Some 
didn't. Your brain learned patterns. What "good" looks like. But you never made those patterns conscious. So you can't fully articulate them."

Him: Yeah, exactly. That's the problem. It only works when I do it.

That's the actual bottleneck.

His knowledge is trapped in his subconscious and he’s working off of intuition.

So here's what we're doing:

Step 1: Figure out what his brain is actually looking for.

Pull every deal he closed won → Feed it into Claude → See what's consistent.

The goal: find the patterns of what good looks like.


Step 2: Write it down.

Once we know what "good" looks like, we make it a checklist.

Now it's not in his head (step 1 and 2 will be tedious at first).


Step 3: Let Claude do the work.

Export companies from the data base results that match the initial criteria and upload to Claudecowork.

Claude checks each website against the checklist and returns the good ones.

20 minutes instead of 3-4 hours.

He’ll be able to build more pipeline, faster.

His "intuition" won't be stuck in his head anymore.

It's in a system.

Which means he can repeat it and scale it



P.S. I’ve been spending 3-4 hours a day vibe coding. All this AI can be overwhelming if you don't know where to point it to. The easiest place to start, at least for me, is looking at what tasks are draining my time that I'm doing manually that I can automate.

Every week I run a group coaching call for AEs at companies like LinkedIn, Hubspot, Klaviyo, Nooks, etc.

Every week after the call, I'd spend 30+ minutes doing the same thing:
→ Pull up the Fathom recording
→ Read through the transcript
→ Summarize the key topics
→ Format everything into a lesson
→ Publish it to our learning portal
→ Copy the topics into Slack for the community

It's not hard work.

But it's tedious as hell and eats at my calendar.

So I automated the entire thing with AI (via Claude Cowork).

Now, every Friday at 1:00 PM, a Claude task kicks off automatically.

It opens Fathom, extracts the full transcript, identifies the coaching topics, generates a formatted title and "How to..." summary for each topic, creates and publishes the lesson in Kajabi, moves it to the top of the course, and posts a recap to our Slack channel.

The whole workflow runs itself. I just show up, coach, and it's done.

Fathom uses encrypted video streaming that blocks automated downloads. Kajabi's drag-and-drop needed custom browser scripting to reorder lessons. The "simple" automation required real problem-solving at every point.

Some lessons I'm learning:
1. "Automate everything" is the wrong goal.
2. Recurring tasks are the highest ROI automation targets.
3. AI agents are better at browser automation than you'd expect.
4. The bottleneck is rarely the AI.

We're entering a whole new era where the competitive advantage isn't knowing how to use AI, but it's knowing how to wire AI into your actual workflows.

If you're a seller or sales leader doing repetitive pre or post-session work every week you're sitting on hours of reclaimed time (houuuurs)




P.S. I’ve been coaching AEs in my community on how to leverage AI in sales. Feb and March coaching slots are sold out, but if you’re interested in joining HMU, we have a waitlist.

See this woman to the left?

If you're in SaaS sales, you might not recognize her.

Her name is Erica Feidner

She's known as the Piano Matchmaker

And every serious salesperson should study her.

Inc. called her one of the top 10 salespeople of all time.

She was Steinway & Sons's top salesperson for a decade & sold over $40M in pianos.

Here are 5 things she does that puts her in another league:

1. REDEFINE YOUR ROLE:
Erica refers to herself as a "piano matchmaker" rather than a salesperson.

Her: "My passion in life is to pair people to pianos in a way that reflects their lifestyle and their personality."

That means YOUR solution may not be the right fit for your prospect (and that's okay)

It took me years to realize not every interested prospect is a fit.

Instead of being a salesperson, be a [solution] matchmaker.


2. PRIORITIZE CLIENT EXPERIENCE OVER THE SALE:
The best salespeople know that buyers don't want to be sold, they want to be helped.

They know that if a prospect feels good with you early on, you're closer to making a deal.

Erica: "What I try to bring to the floor is a wonderful experience for clients and finding exactly the right piano that is in line with their needs and financial comfort zone."

If your prospect's highest priority is price, consider showing them a range of your rates first.

Every sales call should be customized.


3. DON'T RUSH TO MAKE THE SALE:
If the perfect piano isn't available, Erica tells clients to wait until she finds the right one, even at the risk of them purchasing elsewhere.

Her: "If I feel that the piano isn't perfect, I'll tell them to go home and I'll call them when I find the right one."

But, this is exactly how she builds trust and credibility.

I closed a Series D company last year to do onsite sales training for their AEs.

I told the head of sales I'd rather we slow down just to make sure I'm the right fit.

We spent an extra 2 days doing more due diligence.

I earned his trust and closed the deal.


4. READ THE ROOM:
Use conversational cues and body language to understand what the client's sentiment is.

Erica: "I listen to the tone of their voice, the speed of their voice, eye contact or not."

This is why turning on webcam first on Zooms is table stakes.

Example: If your prospect raises their eyebrows in surprise during your sales demo, that's an indicator that they're impressed.

"Sam, seems like this is striking a chord with you?"


5. ADAPT BY PERSONA:
Customize your communication style to fit the client's background and preferences.

Erica: "For instance, engineers might need detailed technical information, while musicians might prioritize sound quality. Once I figured that out, I can speak in a language that they understand best."

For example: In my experience, meet with your prospect before a demo to understand who's showing up and what they care about.

I used to make the mistake of winging it and showing up half prepared.

Half prepared = not prepared.

I review 30+ calls a week for the reps I coach. This is the single most expensive habit I see (it's not discovery).

I was reviewing a call last week where the rep did everything right.

Really solid discovery and demo. 

Then he showed pricing.

Prospect said: "Hmm, that's a bit more than we expected."

And the rep, without missing a beat, said: "Yeah, so we actually have some Q4 pricing incentives right now. If you move forward by end of month, I can probably get you a better rate."

Nobody asked for a discount.

The prospect hadn't said they couldn't afford it.

Hadn't even finished their thought.

The rep just gave it away.

Here's what happens when you do that:

1. You tell the buyer the price was never real. 
2. And you train them to expect a deal every single time you show a number. 

So now every future conversation with that buyer starts with them waiting for you to cave.

I call this flinching.

Most reps don't even realize they're doing it. 

They hear "that's more than expected" and their brain skips to "I'm about to lose this deal."

So they reach for the only tool they think will save it.

The problem: "that's more than we expected" means completely different things depending on who's saying it and why. 

Each version needs a different response.

If you flinch before figuring out which one you're dealing with, you give away money for nothing.

Stop treating every pricing pushback the same. 

Start diagnosing before you respond.

I'm breaking down the full framework in Monday's newsletter. The diagnosis, the talk tracks, all of it (including a cheatsheet you can use).

Read it here tomorrow along with 6.6K+ sellers: demotoclose.com/newsletter


P.S.  It's my birthday today. Instead of cake, I'm giving you a newsletter that'll save you thousands in commission.

I'm consulting for a company that raised over $120M, and we've built AI agents based on my sales methodology to audit thousands of sales calls at scale and score them automatically.

The results are automatically fed into:

a) Slack - real time notifications
b) Salesforce - to generate report on trends

We’re using this to coach reps on high leverage strategies.

It took us about 1.5 months to get to v1 (and still tweaking it)

But the takeaway from implementing this is:
1. What is a high frequency task
2. That is low complexity
3. But is manual and guzzles time,
4. That you can chop up into smaller mini tasks?

Build an AI agent around that and tinker.

Then do it again, and tinker.

You won’t learn about how to be an AI native by reading about it all day.

This is where I built my confidence in sales.

Wearing a suit and door knocking during in Miami (in summer...it's hot).

The cheapest homes in this neighborhood are $10M-$15M.

2 years prior I had quit my first sales job because I was scared.

That notebook you see me holding was a list of all the homeowners that told us to F off.

I had to make sure we never knocked on their homes again.

I never closed a single deal that year in that neighborhood.

But I walked away with a sales MBA

The one thing that can compensate for lack of sales skill is confidence.

And after 1 year of door knocking and cold calling I was confident as hell.

That’s how I eventually found myself in tech sales and teaching others how to be confident and sell better.

First as an early stage AE.

Then as a 2X VP of sales.

Here are 14 (of the many) rules that will never be dead in sales that I've learned:

1. Always show up even if you're not in the mood

2. Don't move onto another skill until you've improved the current one

3. You'll sell more when asking questions vs talking/pitching

4. Always have a compelling reason for the prospect to listen/show up

5. A few bad experiences and screw ups doesn't mean YOU are a screw up

6. You'll always learn more when you fail vs succeed

7. Betting on yourself is the best seed you can plant

8. Surround yourself with people who you look up to

9. Affirmations are cheesy until you do it consistently

10. Community is underrated, never do it alone.

11. Expect the work to be harder/longer than what you anticipated 

12. There is always a trade-off, always.

13. How you say things is sometimes more important than what you say.

14. Building a brand makes sales so much easier

Jen Allen-Knuth

Founder, DemandJen | Sales Trainer & SKO Keynote Speaker | Dog Rescue Advocate

I help B2B revenue teams stop losing pipeline to buyer status quo. I'm a former Enterprise seller who carried quota for 18 years, closing 7-figure deals with Fortune 500 brands. Now, I run DemandJen, a sales-training firm trusted by Autodesk, GE, G2, IBM, Bloomberg, Instructure, Sprout Social, and more.

From conference stages to company Sales kickoffs, I'm known for:

- Buyer-Centric Frameworks – Practical playbooks for defeating buyer status quo in outbound pipeline generation, running executive-level discovery, building a point of view on cost of inaction (COI), and gaining consensus with larger Enterprise buying groups. 

- Story-First Messaging – Techniques that replace product pitches with problem-centric narratives that buyers remember.

- Engaging Delivery – A direct, humorous style that keeps even your most tenured reps taking notes.

Featured in Forbes, Sales Hacker, and 200+ podcasts, I combine real-world stories with data-driven insight to move audiences from inspiration to application. When I'm not on the road, you’ll find me in the Chicago suburbs chasing my 4 rescue dogs and 4 step-kids.

Head of DemandJen

Delivering SKO keynotes & virtual workshops that won't put your teams to sleep.

B2B Sales & Marketing teams have tried to earn buyer time and attention with a strategy of "more". 

More dials.
More emails.
More content.
More "value" and ROI.

But, 2023 showed us "more" is expensive and no competition against today's risk-averse B2B buying teams.

Instead of motivating the team to do “more”, I help empower teams to defeat customer status
quo and to make their sales conversations a competitive advantage.

Meet Mara 🩷

She’s a 7 year old, 59lb girl with the most gentle demeanor (especially with kids). 

Dogs like Mara always have a harder time getting adopted. She’s older + she’s a pittie mix. It doesn’t make her any less deserving of love. 

Every dog should be judged by their own demeanor. Not breed sterotypes.

We have a husky who never makes a peep and is scared of his own shadow.

We have a pittie who would throw herself in front of a bus to protect our kids. 

Mara is calm, easygoing, walks nicely on a leash, and does amazing in daycare. She’s a complete love.

Mara deserves a loving family. Will you help share her? 🩷

Available at Many Paws Global Rescue in Palatine, IL.

Photo credit: Nicholas I. Knuth 📸 

PS - I know many of you have pitties, too. I love seeing your photos in the comments - please share them!

I just read a post from a CEO who was in disbelief that a customer churned b/c they're going to try DIYing the vendor's AI solution.  It included the quote - "Good luck, see you in 6 months when you realize how hard it is."

I think we're going to see a lot more of this from tech companies in 2026. This isn't me picking on anyone. DIY is a really tough competitor. And, it hurts to lose to it. 

But, wishing for a customer's failure has never served me well in Sales. 

It's understandable that our knee-jerk response is to name all of the reasons why DIY is a bad idea. 

Often, our points are valid. 

But, the delivery is defensive. We erode trust because we fail to be collaborative or helpful. 

Instead, here's something that worked for me when I was up against DIY:

#1 - I asked questions about how they were thinking about rolling it out. Not "gotcha" questions. Qs that were genuinely curious in nature that helped me understand their beliefs/assumptions. I sought to understand (vs. seeking to correct them). Often, this exposed a flawed assumption. 

#2 - I shared ideas/tactics from other execs that were taking a DIY approach, so they could learn from them. I stopped fighting against DIY. This built trust.

#3 - Lastly, I offered at least one idea for how I could partner with the team as they thought through their DIY approach. I prescribed suggestions on areas where I knew DIY typically fell down. It gave me the chance to get in with the teams and illuminate the roadblocks that made DIY harder than they assumed.

More of those DIY deals started to convert. Not all of them. Just more of them.

TLDR - there's a great Brent Adamson quote - "Before you tell someone why they're wrong, first tell them why they're right". 

When competing against DIY, I stopped trying to be "right". I started trying to be useful.

I'm no LinkedIn expert, but I don't think we win by taking what works for someone else's content and trying to copy it. Here are 3 people who I think embody what it means to a have a voice on here that is totally and completely their own.  

Sara Uy
She grew like crazy on here after filming herself making cold calls every week. She's relatable because she was never trying to impress you. She showed the good, bad, and ugly. She took a job-to-be-done that makes many sellers nervous and she did it in front of the entire LinkedIn community. My favorite comments from her followers are the ones where sellers say, "You inspired me to pick up the phone more". Sara didn't copy what bigger creators were doing. As a result, she's at the top of every Sales creator list. Right where she belongs. 

Tas Bober
The queen of sharp wit. Her expertise is paid ads landing pages. But, she finds 100 different ways to make it fun. She's unafraid to say how she feels + doesn't shy away from constructive debates. When I met Tas for the first time last year, I felt like I already knew her. She does a great job balancing SME content with human content. I'm pretty sure if I was given 10 random LinkedIn posts, I could pick the one she wrote. Her voice is so uniquely hers. 

Shali Rana Reed
She's the people's champion. You can feel Shali in your corner when you read her posts. It's impossible not to click "see more" when her posts appear in the feed. She's one of the best at sparking curiosity in her hooks, without making it feel corny. You never know if it's going to be a pun, a serious post, or a work post. I like how she keeps us guessing. She has this no-nonsense energy about her. Big sister energy, in the best of ways. 

Your turn. Whose voice stands out to you as completely their own?

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The Battle

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